Thursday, 27 May 2010

Jim and Matt had brought in some of their 15mm ancients. Ptolemaic Egyptians verses Maccabee\Hasmonean Jews. The rules being a heavily modified version of DBMM, DBAs big brother, and a game which I've never played before.

I got talked into running the Egyptian left flank. In charge of the Cavalry and Elephants and some lighter infantry elements. Unfortunately my command was allocated the low command dice. Given that my opponent was an independent command and could roll his die as normal, this put my command at a disadvantage despite having the more maneuverable troops.

The low die meant that I had the embarrassment of having my cavalry being outpaced by the Phalanx in the centre. The Jews had refused the bait and were holding back their centre as the flanks advanced. Their left took cover in some rough ground, their right making contact with my troop.

My elephants initially turned out to be unimpressive and I lost one early on due to bad die rolling. My line held surprisingly well, even managing to survive being fragmented a bit. Finally the cavalry managed to ride to our rescue, first clearing the lights covering their flank and then taking away the overlap, with my leader hitting the back of the enemy line.

A previous bit of indecision by my opponent had left his cavalry and half his skirmishers in limbo, as they first tried to move to the centre to attack the Phalanx in the flank\rear, but despite rolling well for his PIPs he could not commit them to the centre and did not have enough to bring them back to shore up his main force by nullifying our cavalry.

The big phalanx battle in the middle was starting its inevitable wheel. Despite the left flank being left vulnerable, the Greek-Egyptians started to get the upper hand. The same was occurring on both flanks and with all three Jewish commands reaching close to their breakpoints the game was called.¶